Choosing Up Sides

When preacher's boy Luke Bledsoe steps on a baseball field, he discovers he has real pitching talent. For once, he can be proud of being left-handed. But Reverend Bledsoe believes that the left side is the side of Satan and the baseball field is the Devil's playground. Luke has spent his whole life trying to please his father. Will he choose to give up the game he's come to love-or turn his back on his family?

An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
1999 IRA Children's Book Award
A BCCB Blue Ribbon Book

John H. Ritter (b. October 31, 1951, San Pedro, California) is an American novelist, short story writer, teacher, and lecturer. His first novel, Choosing Up Sides, published in 1998, won the 1999 International Reading Association Children’s Book Award for Older Readers and was named an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults.

Ritter's novels have tackled subjects as diverse as the Vietnam War, the war in Iraq, issues of land development, jazz fusion, and Billy the Kid; and often showcase the sport of baseball. According to Vicki Sherbert, writing in The ALAN Review for the National Council of Teachers of English, Ritter "uses the game of baseball, the glory of music, and the power of the written word to illustrate how young people can overcome everyday, and not-so-everyday, challenges. Each book goes beyond the story of the game, beyond the story of the problem, right to the heart of Ritter's message: What is really valuable in life?"


John Ritter lives in San Pedro, California. Learn more about him at www.johnhritter.com